A place for St. Vladimir's parishioners to ask questions and get answers. A place for spiritual discussion sometimes prompted by and always moderated by Fr. Gregory. Read. Think. Pray. Question. Repeat. Ask a question by emailing ogrisha@stvladimiraami.org or in the comment area.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Today was going to be a good day no
matter what. The opportunity to serve Liturgy at the great Kiev Caves
Lavra. It is just silly to say that would not be a great day. The
plan was for Metropolitan Phillip and Archbishop Peter to lead the
Liturgy at the Dormition Cathedral of the Lavra, but the Metropolitan
got sick unfortunately, and so Archbishop Peter ended up as the main
celebrant at this historically significant cathedral. Pictures of
that part of the day can be found HERE.

HERE is a little video I
made of a couple of pro Subdeacons (pro in that they vest bishops
multiple times per week) putting the Great Omophorion on Archbishop
Peter. This may be helpful for those that don't have the opportunity
to vest the bishop often, but need to do so occasionally. Most of the
hierarchal vestments are not too tough, but that Great Omophorion is
a real mystery most times. I hope this helps some of you who are
reading this.

After a nice meal at the brotherhood
trapeza we rested a bit, did some shopping for priests and parishes,
and then were given a guided tour of both the near and the far caves by Archimandrite Barnabas (the guest master of the monastery).
Those two designations have to do with how close each set of those
caves is to the Dormition Cathedral, by the way. The lighting was bad
and I didn't think I would get any good pictures but I snapped a few
just in case. I should have done many more, since I was able to edit
the things so that they came out decently. Sorry now that I didn't. So I will just have to return another time to do this. :) Perhaps we will arrange a parish pilgrimage here if Archbishop Peter blesses. This is one of those places that every Orthodox Christian should
visit once in his or her lifetime. Jerusalem and here. The holy
fathers resting in the caves in their incorrupt relics are a real
spiritual inspiration. So worth the trip if there is any way you can
make it. The pictures I took are of the New Martyr Metropolitan
Vladimir. I did that because the day of his commemoration and
martyrdom is the same as my name's day. I had the great honor to
serve Liturgy on an antimins sanctified by him as Metropolitan of
Kiev at Holy Trinity monastery the last year we lived there (when I
was a newly-ordained priest). I will never forget that. And so when
this opportunity came up I had to take the pictures. Here are the few
other pictures we have of the day (some from Liturgy, some from the tour):

Tomorrow Archbishop Peter and Fr.
Victor head on to Pochaev. I won't get to make that part of the trip
as I need to return to Michigan on Tuesday to resume our parish and
seminary work. Vladyka and Fr. Victor will return to the states on
Saturday.

Please pray for us all as we travel. Thanks for following the blog during these days. Thank you for your prayers. Thank you for your interest. Please continue to pray for us - even when we are not travelling.

Today we left the Poltava diocese and
headed for Kiev. We traveled through the Cherkavskaya province and
stopped at the Zolotonoshnaya convent. St. Sophrony of Irkutsk built
the Transfiguration cathedral here before he went to Siberia. We were
met by the Assistant Abbess (at the very end the bishops had an
opportunity to visit the very ill Abbess), and later joined by Bishop
John, who is the vicar bishop of the Cherkavskaya diocese. Pictures
from the monastery are below, with a video of Archbishop Peter saying
a few words about St. John of Shanghai & San Francisco HERE, and
a short video of the sisters bidding Vladyka goodbye HERE.

In addition to the monastery proper
(which is quite impressive, with more than 100 sisters) we visited
the Skete of St. John the Theologian, which houses another 15 sisters
or so. This is new construction which is quite impressive – and not
that rare. In almost all the convents and monasteries we visited
there was some sort of new construction or restoration going on. The
physical wound of the Soviet period is still present on some level,
although one is happy to see that the spiritual would is beginning to
be healed. To say that it is “healed” is premature and no one
here would argue that. Things are much better, but a large part of
the population still remains unchurched, and a part is still hostile
to faith. Thus, we can say unequivicatlly that much has been done,
but there is even more to do. And everywhere we go they ask our
prayers that their work will be fruitful and continue long after this
generation has passed. And so I think it is really encumbant upon us
to pray – to ask the Lord to help us to sanctify our American land, but also
that the lands that suffered under the Communist yoke continue to
move towards sanctifying their lands also. Pictures from the visit to
the Skete are here:

After the skete we moved towards Kiev
in a more focused way. There were no more stops, although there were
churches we passed by that Metropolitan Phillip pointed out to us as
significant for various reasons. Finally we arrived at the Kiev Caves
monastery, the oldest and arguably the most important in the history
of Rus and the subsequent Russian Empire. Here we had the honor of
serving Vigil with His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry, head of the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriachate). Metropolitan Onuphry
heads by orders of magnitude the largest Orthodox Church in Ukraine,
and the only one recognized as canonical by any of the other Local
Orthodox Churches. After a really beautiful service sung by two
choirs (a mixed choir on the right “kliros” and a men's choir on
the left “kliros”), His Beatitude invited us to dine with him at
his official residence. Before we get to that I want to note why I
put kliros in quotation marks. It is true that at the Dormition
Cathedral where we served there is a choir on the right and a choir
on the left. BUT, those kliroses are about 50 feet above the floor of
the cathedral. So we are not talking about small areas that we might
think of in this regard, but huge choir lofts which happen to be on
the right and the left. Pictures from
the afternoon at the monastery and the vigil are here:

Pictures from the meal at the
Metropolitan's residence are here:

We included pictures from the meal only
because there was an exchange of gifts then and I thought you would
find that interesting. We would not be joining the Metropolitan for
Divine Liturgy the following day, so we needed to exchange gifts at
the meal.

After the meal we headed back to the
really beautiful monastery guest house that we are staying in and
prepared for the Divine Liturgy the next day.